In the field of communications, several standardized intefaces have been adopted for establishing electrical connections to communication lines. One such interface is the miniature jack, referred to as a modular jack, that has been adopted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission as the standard connector for connecting telephone equipment to telephone lines. This jack, however, comes in different versions depending on the number of electrical contacts desired--four, six or eight. Additionally, connectors exist, for equipment other than telephone sets, that share the same location at a customer premises but do not share the same interface standard. Although a proliferation of connectors exists, it is desirable to provide a common housing that will accommodate various connectors. A convenient housing is a wall plate, but existing plate designs have a number of drawbacks which are briefly discussed.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,261,633 is illustrative of the situation in which a jack frame is molded into the wall plate itself. While it is an advantage that the wall plate has a jack that is flush with its front surface, such apparatus suffers the disadvantage that a different wall plate is needed for each different jack. For example, within the class of modular telephone jacks it is possible to insert a six-contact plug into an eight-contact jack, but undesirable because users will think that they are making the wrong connection. Thus, different wall plates would be needed to handle jacks that are only slightly different. Furthermore, from a reliability standpoint, it is undesirable to trust customers, or even repair-persons, to insert a spring block into the back side of a jack frame because the proper alignment of its closely spaced spring contacts is critical. (Note that if the jack frame is part of the wall plate, then the spring block with its associated spring contacts must be field installed rather than factory installed).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,859,201 is illustrative of wall plates that accommodate a number of jack outlets which can only be removed from the back side of the wall plate. Although this patent only shows two jacks mounted on the wall plate, it would be very difficult to reach and deflect the flexible tabs that interlock the jack and wall plate together--particularly if a number of wires were connected to each jack. Although the flexible tabs are located on the modular jack in this patent, the problem of easy removal from the wall plate is not improved by molding the flexible tabs into the back of the wall plate itself. This is demonstrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,141 where access to the tabs is no better than the '201 patent.
It is desirable to be able to mount a number of communications jacks on a single wall plate and still be able to easily remove any one of them. None of the above patents offers a satisfactory solution to the problem of releasing jacks from their associated wall plate in a convenient manner.